About The Collection

Edgar J. Goodspeed (1871-1962)

Edgar Johnson Goodspeed was born in Quincy, Illinois, and graduated
in the final preparatory class of the original (Old) University of
Chicago in 1886. After receiving a B.A. from Denison University, in
Granville, Ohio, in 1890, Goodspeed went to Yale for a year to study
Semitic languages under William Rainey Harper. When Harper was
appointed the first president of the University of Chicago, Goodspeed
moved back to Chicago and continued his graduate studies at the new
institution, where his father, Thomas W. Goodspeed, was an incorporator
and secretary of the Board of Trustees. While pursuing graduate work,
Goodspeed taught classics at two Chicago-area schools, the Morgan Park
Academy and South Side Academy.

Goodspeed received his D.B. from the University of Chicago in 1897
and his Ph.D. in 1898. At the initiative of President Harper, he spent
the following two years abroad, traveling and studying in Germany,
England, the Netherlands, Egypt, Palestine, and Greece. Upon his return
to Chicago in 1900, he joined the University faculty and rose steadily
to become Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek in 1915. When his
New Testament colleague Ernest DeWitt Burton was appointed president of
the University of Chicago in 1923, Goodspeed succeeded him as Chairman
of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature. In
1937, Goodspeed became an emeritus member of the faculty and retired
with his wife, Elfleda Bond Goodspeed, to a home in Bel-Air,
California.

Goodspeed's lengthy bibliography reflected his interest in presenting
results of manuscript research to scholarly as well as popular
audiences. His publications included Chicago Literary Papyri
(1908); A Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of
the University of Chicago, with Martin Springling (1912); The
Story of the New Testament (1918); Greek Gospel Texts in
America (1918); A Harmony of the Synoptic Gospels in
Greek, with Ernest D. Burton (1920); The New Testament: An
American Translation (1923); The Bible: An American
Translation, with J. M. Powis Smith (1931);The Rockefeller
McCormick New Testament, with Donald W. Riddle and Harold R.
Willoughby (1932); The Story of the Old Testament (1934);
The Apocrypha: An American Translation (1938); and How to
Read the Bible (1946).

Early Manuscript Studies at the University of Chicago,
1869-1927

During his graduate studies at the University of Chicago in the
1890s, Edgar Goodspeed was drawn to manuscript research by two of his
professors, biblical Greek scholar Caspar Rene Gregory and Egyptologist
James Henry Breasted. Goodspeed completed his dissertation on a
mathematical papyrus fragment and later brought unpublished fragments to
his classes for students to decipher.

Goodspeed recognized the importance of locating unpublished sources
and describing them for scholarly research. His Descriptive
Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of
Chicago (1912), published to coincide with the opening of the
William Rainey Harper Memorial Library, was one of the first published
catalogues of manuscripts in American library collections. In the
introduction to this volume, Goodspeed stated his belief that the
Catalogue would "make the manuscripts now in the University's
possession more useful to the departments to which they relate, and that
the only way to build up a notable collection of manuscripts in the
University is to make the most of what we have."

When Goodspeed wrote these words, the University of Chicago already
held two New Testament manuscripts. In 1869, a fifteenth-century
harmony of the Gospels, Evangeliorum quattuor harmonia (Ms.
19), had been acquired by the Baptist Union Theological Seminary,
predecessor of the University of Chicago Divinity School, along with
other volumes from the library of German orientalist and biblical
scholar Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg.

In 1895, as Goodspeed recounted in the Catalogue, the
University of Chicago purchased a codex of the Greek Gospels, designated
the Haskell Gospels (Ms. 46), "through Professor Ernest D. Burton and
Professor Caspar Rene Gregory, from the estate of a Greek of Thera, by
whom it had been brought to Chicago." This text remained for a
generation the only New Testament Greek manuscript in the University's
collection, and many New Testament students were trained on it.

Acquired with the Haskell Gospels in 1895 was Ms. 50, a Greek
lectionary designated the Haskell Lectionary. Both the Gospels and
Lectionary were named in honor of Frederick Haskell and his widow,
Caroline E. Haskell, who provided funds for construction of Haskell
Oriental Museum, the home of the Divinity School, as well as two endowed
lectureships on religion.

Building the Goodspeed Collection, 1927-1952

Within years of his appointment as chairman of the Department of New
Testament and Early Christian Literature in 1923, Edgar Goodspeed
accelerated his search for New Testament manuscripts for the University
of Chicago. Goodspeed considered manuscripts to be as essential to
research in the humanities as laboratories in the natural sciences. His
goal was the acquisition of hitherto unknown, unlisted, and undescribed
sources that could provide the basis for new scholarship. Building on a
remarkable series of acquisitions achieved in rapid succession,
Goodspeed was able to create the core of the notable collection of New
Testament manuscripts that today bears his name.

Goodspeed's first discovery, made almost by chance at the conclusion
of a summer-long search through Europe, was of unparalleled historical
and iconographical significance. In September 1927, while in Paris,
Goodspeed found in the shop of art dealer Maurice Stora a complete
Byzantine New Testament (Ms. 965) written in a fine cursive hand, bound
in splendid gilt covers, and containing more than ninety miniatures.
The manuscript was acquired by Goodspeed's colleague Harold R.
Willoughby on behalf of Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick, who made it
available on loan for study by the New Testament Department. Four years
after its arrival in Chicago, a three-volume facsimile edition of the
manuscript, edited by Goodspeed and colleagues, was published by the
University of Chicago Press as The Rockefeller McCormick New
Testament (1932).

The acquisition of the Rockefeller McCormick manuscript, at the time
only the second complete Byzantine New Testament manuscript in America,
generated sensational publicity on radio and in the press. By 1930, in
the midst of continuing public interest, the University of Chicago had
acquired fourteen complete or fragmentary Greek New Testament
manuscripts from a variety of sources, including Chicago's local Greek
community. As the collection grew, so too did the research interests of
the Chicago faculty, expanding to encompass iconographical study as well
as textual collation.

The year 1929 was notable for the large number and range of
acquisitions. These included the Nicolaus Gospels (Ms. 129),
signed by its scribe, Nicolaus of Edessa, in 1133; the Chrysanthus
Gospels (Ms. 131), with a double set of evangelist potraits; the
Hyacinthus Gospels (Ms. 135), dated 1303 and one of three known
to have been written by Hyancinthus; and the Theophanes
Praxapostolos (Ms. 142), a codex Goodspeed successfully secured
from a dealer who was intending to disbind it and sell leaf by leaf.

In the next two years, fourteen more manuscripts were added to the
growing collection. Among these were the D'Hendecourt Roll
(Ms. 125) of the thirteenth century, which had been used as a magical
amulet; the Argos Lectionary (Ms. 128), which was acquired from
the manager of a Chicago restaurant owned and frequented by gangland
figures and described in the media as "the Gangster Bible"; and the
Serpent Lectionary (Ms. 715), named for a fanciful decorative
headpiece that turns a simple rope twist into a serpent entwined around
a rod.

Among the acquisitions of 1932-1937 were the Ira Maurice Price
Praxapostolos (Ms. 922), according to one method of classification
the oldest representative of a "family" of the texts of Acts; and the
Gregory Matthew-Mark (Ms. 899), a fragment from a large ninth-
or tenth-century lectern Bible, one of a number of Armenian manuscripts
acquired by Goodspeed. The single most spectacular acquisition of these
years was the Elizabeth Day McCormick Apocalypse (Ms. 931). As
Goodspeed recounted in his memoirs, while lunching one day with
Elizabeth Day McCormick, she asked him whether he would be interested in
a manuscript of Revelation with text illustrations. When Goodspeed
expressed interest but declared that no such manuscript was known to
exist, she responded that she had one with sixty-nine miniatures; the
manuscript was soon presented to the University of Chicago as a gift.
The only known illustrated Apocalypse in Greek, dated to ca. 1600, the
text was published by the University of Chicago Press in a two-volume
facsimile edition, The Elizabeth Day McCormick Apocalypse
(1940).

Through the work of Harold R. Willoughby and other colleagues, the
later 1930s and 1940s brought further riches to the New Testament
collection. These included the Silver Gospels (Ms. 951), an
Armenian manuscript in a beautiful silver binding, contemporary with the
school of silversmiths that flourished at Caesarea in the seventeenth
century; and the Rockefeller McCormick New Testament itself,
which was purchased by Elizabeth Day McCormick in 1942 from the estate
of her late cousin Edith Rockefeller McCormick and presented as a gift
to the University of Chicago.

In 1948, the University of Chicago acquired, along with other Greek
and Armenian manuscripts, the Edward Goodman Gospels (Ms. 202),
a thirteenth-century Greek text representing the last phase of Byzantine
ornament in the prominent palmettes decorting the headpiece at the
beginning of Luke. In 1952, Goodspeed himself made the final addition
to the collection when he presented, as a gift in memory of his wife,
the Elfleda Bond Goodspeed Gospels (Ms. 1054), a Greek
manuscript of the tenth century containing a fine example of early
minuscule hand.

Goodspeed's leadership and initative had brought tangible and
substantive results. During the years he was directly involved in
building the collection, he had also relished the thrill of pursuing and
locating previously unknown manuscripts, a passion reflected in the only
mystery novel he ever wrote, The Curse in the Colophon (1935),
featuring a manuscript scholar clearly patterned after Goodspeed
himself.

In October 1948, on the occasion of Goodspeed's seventy-fifth
birthday, the University of Chicago formally acknowledged the results of
his diligent collecting and scholarship by inviting Goodspeed to return
to campus as the guest of honor at a two-day international conference on
New Testament Manuscript Study. To mark the occasion, the University of
Chicago Press published A Biography and Bibliography of Edgar
Johnson Goodspeed (1948), compiled by James Harrell Cobb and Louis
B. Jennings. And recognizing the creation of what was then one of the
largest collections of its kind at any American university, Harold H.
Swift, chairman of the Board of Trustees, announced the decision to name
the University of Chicago's collection of New Testament manuscripts in
honor of Edgar J. Goodspeed.

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